The Coleherne
Earls Court, London (near Earl's Court Tube Station)
The Coleherne used to vie with the Queen’s Head in Chelsea as London’s oldest gay pub. Gay men started frequenting the venue in the 1950s, and by the 1970s it was well known as a centre of gay life in London. Earl’s Court became one of the best-known ‘gay ghettoes’, formed partly as a result of the post-war changes in housing, which saw the larger houses around Earl’s Court broken up into flats. More well-heeled than Paddington, but cheaper than Chelsea, a distinctive community grew up here which found its zenith in the 1970s and 1980s.